Watch the crowd interact, shout, clap and boo during and after Sen. Lisa Murkowski's video address on Friday to the Alaska Republican Convention.

The Paulite-Tea Party alliance that has been the result of Randy Reudrich's announcement that he is stepping down as Alaska GOP Chairman has been a surprise to many. Perhaps because I've been to so many Tea Party events in Alaska, photographing, interviewing and polling people, I'm less surprised than many, but I'm still surprised the party didn't act more heavy-handed to keep this from happening.

Ron Paul supporters team with Joe Miller to take over Alaska Republican Party

Amanda Coyne writes:

Some party loyalists had expected that either Alaska GOP favorites Judy Eledge or Bruce Schulte would win the chairmanship, particularly after Schulte opted out to give more power to Eledge’s nomination.

But after the party delegates’ votes were tallied Saturday evening, a cheer erupted from Paul supporters on the second floor of the Hilton. Others looked crestfallen. Some blamed failed senatorial candidate Joe Miller and his wife, Kathleen, who spent much of their time Saturday huddled with Paul supporters. Miller was largely expected to jockey for a party leadership position, but it was Kathleen who, sporting a Ron Paul sticker, won a seat on Alaska’s GOP Electoral College.

The Millers were nowhere to be found at the party afterwards at Ron Paul’s Alaska campaign headquarters in downtown Anchorage, where both Millette and Brown spoke to supporters.

“They tried every maneuver they could, but God prevailed,” Millette told the crowd, many who were half his age or younger.

To be sure, not all Paul supporters believe in God, but a certain alliance between the tea party and Paulites was necessary for an upset in GOP politics on the Last Frontier, as evidenced by Joe Miller backers aligning with Paul supporters at this weekend’s convention. And so, regardless of religious beliefs, they cheered for Millette.

KTUU TV carried a short item on the takeover. So far, the Anchorage Daily News has not filed a story on what may turn out to be a national-level news story.

Amanda Coyne has already been accused in the comments to her Dispatch story of "spinning" what happened yesterday evening:

I've seen this article updated at least 3 times and each time they spin it further. The 1st incarnation was pretty much ok, except that they said we want to take Randy's position away from him before his term expires officially. Other than that they could have just kept the original. This "paper" seems to stray further from credible with each month and is seemingly becoming part of that "mainstream media" that they came out against as a voice of truth in conception.

Coyne isn't giving way:

Amanda here. When did I say that they wanted to take of RR's seat before it expired?

What the Paulites have done here this week is not entirely unprecedented. Paul's delegates at conventions and caucuses in other states are showing more staying power than the GOP elite and mainstream media find comforting:

Minnesota will send 40 delegates to the Republican National
Convention. Twenty of the 24 delegates based on congressional districts
were awarded to Texas Rep. Ron Paul in selection processes that concluded this weekend.

Thirteen Minnesota delegates will be allocated based on the results
of a statewide convention in May, according to Paul campaign senior
adviser Doug Wead.

Wead wrote
on his blog that GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney is an a
“panic” after the Paul landslide. Similar efforts to bolster the Texas
congressman’s delegate count are underway in Iowa, Colorado, Maine and
other states.

If Miller is quietly behind this pulling the strings, then you can bet
your ass that Palin is behind him pulling HIS strings. After all Palin
and Miller attempted a similar coup of the Republican party back in 2008. (As a matter of fact THAT attempt was behind the scandal that helped to derail Miller's run at the Senate seat in 2010.)

Only this time they used the Ron Paul supporters in Alaska to out
maneuver the established GOP players. So THAT explains why Palin has
been kissing Ron Paul's ass lately!

As much as I have dreamed about the Alaska GOP being taken over, and
seeing the old corrupt bastards kicked to the curb, the idea of Palin
now having power over the party does NOTHING but fill me with dread.

In fact this might almost make her MORE powerful, and MORE damaging to my state, then she was even as out Governor.

Well so much for me getting a good night's sleep tonight!
[emphasis added]

Griffin's premise that "Palin is behind" anything having to do with this is absurd. I've polled Alaska Tea Party opinion on Ron Paul now for four years. He has always been popular, mostly over his fiscal positions. Miller may have a hand in this - his wife did gain a position on the Alaska GOP Electoral College. But the Paulites pulled the strings, not the Millerians.

At the Wasilla Tea Party Tax Day event, although I polled on different issues than anything touching upon sympathies for Miller or Palin, they both came up in a number of conversations I had with people there. None of the references were flattering. When Palin was mentioned by one of the speakers that day, there was silence. In Wasilla. Nobody at the podium brought up Miller's name.

Saturday evening, The Anchorage Youth Philharmonic and The Anchorage Civic Orchestra held a joint concert.

Lee Murray Wilkins, at left, directed his Youth Philharmonic in his own transcriptions of three pieces by Dmitri Shostakovich, originally written for two violins and piano.

Young (15 years old) Harrison Greenough (in the middle) directed the Youth Philharmonic in the first movement from Mozart's Symphony No. 25. The music became well-known as the opening music heard in the movie Amadeus.

I directed the combined Anchorage Youth Philharmonic and Anchorage Civic Orchestra in the world premiere of Dr. Wilkins' new work, The American 1812 Overture. Lee's new piece, very ably played by the two ensembles, received a very warm reception.

The White House wants to fast track
the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) “free trade” agreement with
Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and
Vietnam. Japan is waiting in the wings, Canada and Mexico want in, Taiwan has announced its intention to meet membership requirements and China says it will “earnestly study” whether to seek entry into the agreement.

Basically, the TPP is NAFTA on steroids.

The White House wants to
reach a deal prior to the election because they know all the
apparatchiks feeding on the $1 billion in Obama campaign money flowing
through the system will launch tribalistic attacks on anyone organizing
against it (activists, labor unions, workers) for “helping Mitt Romney
win” — thus facilitating its easy passage.

A ban performance requirements and domestic content rules (no “made
in the USA,” “buy local” or “green jobs”). An absolute ban, not only
when applied to investors from signatory countries

Ability to extend drug patents and limit production of generic medicines that are used for global health programs

Rollback of regulations that were put in place to prevent another global economic crisis such as “too big to fail” remedies

According to Public Citizen, TPP undermines banking laws,
incorporates SOPA and limits the ability of state and local government
to protect the environment — otherwise US taxpayers have to pay damages,
and US courts have no authority:

Under [TPP] foreign investors can skirt
domestic courts and laws, and sue governments directly before tribunals
of three private sector lawyers operating under World Bank and UN rules
to demand taxpayer compensation for any domestic law
that investors believe will diminish their “expected future profits.”
Over $675 million has been paid to foreign investors under U.S. trade
pacts, while over $12 billion in claims are pending on environmental,
safety, and public health policies under U.S. trade deals.

Public Citizen’s map
(above) shows the foreign corporations from Australia, Brunei, Chile,
Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru and Singapore in your area that would be
shielded from local environmental, zoning and regulatory laws and
operate beyond the reach of US courts. Most browsers cannot display a
map that includes the 7,000 corporate affiliates of Japan-based
corporations in the United States, so Public Citizen compiled a PDF of
the map that includes Japan-based corporations that you can download here.

Over 600 corporate advisors have access to the text of the TPP, while
members of Congress, journalists and the voting public are excluded.

The 12th round of talks begin on May 8 in Dallas, which is US Trade Representative Ron Kirk’s home town.

This has become an April to remember after a winter we will never forget. April is one of my favorite months of the year in south central Alaska, because the change from beginning to end, from day to day, is almost overwhelming.

The lack of moisture this month has made breakup here surprisingly moderate. Giant towers and walls of blown, hardened, darkened snow are melting so fast you can hear them do it.

The sun and daytime heat have gotten my greenhouse off to its best start ever. Over-ripe arugula:

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

In the aftermath of the
world’s worst nuclear power disaster, the news media is just beginning
to grasp that the dangers to Japan and the rest of the world posed by
the Fukushima-Dai-Ichi site are far from over. After repeated warnings
by former senior Japanese officials, nuclear experts, and now a U.S.
Senator, it is sinking in that the irradiated nuclear fuel stored in
spent fuel pools amidst the reactor ruins may have far greater potential
offsite consequences than the molten cores.

After visiting the site recently, Senator Ron Wyden
(D-OR) wrote to Japan’s ambassador to the U.S. stating that, “loss of
containment in any of these pools could result in an even greater
release than the initial accident.”
This is why:

Each pool contains irradiated fuel from several
years of operation, making for an extremely large radioactive inventory
without a strong containment structure that encloses the reactor cores;

Several pools are now completely open to the atmosphere because the
reactor buildings were demolished by explosions; they are about 100
feet above ground and could possibly topple or collapse from structural
damage coupled with another powerful earthquake;

The loss of water exposing the spent fuel will result in overheating
can cause melting and ignite its zirconium metal cladding – resulting
in a fire that could deposit large amounts of radioactive materials over
hundreds of miles.

Irradiated nuclear fuel, also called “spent fuel,” is
extraordinarily radioactive. In a matter of seconds, an unprotected
human one foot away from a single freshly removed spent fuel assembly
would receive a lethal dose of radiation within seconds. As one of the
most dangerous materials in the world, spent reactor fuel poses
significant long-term risks, requiring isolation in a geological
disposal site that can protect the human environment for tens of
thousands of years.

It’s almost 26 years since the Chernobyl reactor
exploded and caught fire releasing enormous amounts of radioactive
debris. The Chernobyl accident revealed the folly of not having an extra
barrier of thick concrete and steel surrounding the reactor core that
is required for modern plants in the U.S., Japan and elsewhere. The
Fukushima Dai-Ichi accident revealed the folly of storing huge amounts
of highly radioactive spent fuel in vulnerable pools, high above the
ground.

What both accidents have in common is widespread
environmental contamination from cesium-137. With a half-life of 30,
years, Cs-137 gives off penetrating radiation, as it decays. Once in
the environment, it mimics potassium as it accumulates in biota and the
human food chain for many decades. When it enters the human body, about
75 percent lodges in muscle tissue, with perhaps the most important
muscle being the heart. Studies of chronic exposure to Cs-137 among
the people living near Chernobyl show an alarming rate of heart
problems, particularly among children.

As more information is made available, we now know
that the Fukushima Dai-Ichi site is storing 10,833 spent fuel assemblies
(SNF) containing roughly 327 million curies of long-lived radioactivity
About 132 million curies is cesium-137 or nearly 85 times the amount
estimated to have been released at Chernobyl.

The overall problem we face is that nearly all of the
spent fuel at the Dai-Ichi site is in vulnerable pools in a high
risk/consequence earthquake zone. The urgency of the situation is
underscored by the ongoing seismic activity around NE Japan in which 13
earthquakes of magnitude 4.0 – 5.7 have occurred off the NE coast of
Honshu in the last 4 days between 4/14 and 4/17. This has been the norm
since the first quake and tsunami hit the site on March 11th of last year. Larger quakes are expected closer to the power plant.

Last week, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO)
revealed plans to remove 2,274 spent fuel assemblies from the damaged
reactors that will probably take at least a decade to accomplish. The
first priority will be removal of the contents in Pool No. 4. This pool
is structurally damaged and contains about 10 times more cesium-137 than
released at Chernobyl. Removal of SNF from the No. 4 reactor is
optimistically expected to begin at the end of 2013. A significant
amount of construction to remove, debris and reinforce the
structurally-damaged reactor buildings, especially the fuel- handling
areas, will be required.

Also, it is not safe to keep 1,882 spent fuel
assemblies containing ~57 million curies of long-lived radioactivity,
including nearly 15 times more cs-137 than released at Chernobyl in the
elevated pools at reactors 5, 6, and 7, which did not experience
melt-downs and explosions.

The main reason why there is so much spent fuel at
the Da-Ichi site, is that it was supposed to be sent to the Rokkasho
reprocessing plant, which has experienced 18 lengthy delays throughout
its construction history. Plutonium and uranium was to be extracted
from the spent fuel there, with the plutonium to be used as fuel at the
Monju fast reactor.

After several decades and billions of dollars, the
United States effectively abandoned the “closed” nuclear fuel cycle 30
years ago for cost and nuclear non-proliferation reasons. Over the past
60 years, the history of fast reactors using plutonium is littered with
failures the most recent being the Monju project in Japan. Monju was
cancelled in November of last year, dealing a fatal blow to the dream of
a “closed” nuclear fuel cycle in Japan.

The stark reality, if TEPCO’s plan is realized, is
that nearly all of the spent fuel at the Da-Ichi containing some of the
largest concentrations of radioactivity on the planet will remain
indefinitely in vulnerable pools. TEPCO wants to store the spent fuel
from the damaged reactors in the common pool, and only to resort to dry,
cask storage when the common pool’s capacity is exceeded. At this time,
the common pool is at 80 percent storage capacity and will require
removal of SNF to make room. TEPCO’s plan is to minimize dry cask
storage as much as possible and to rely indefinitely on vulnerable pool
storage. Senator Wyden finds that TEPCO’s plan for remediation carries
extraordinary and continuing risk. He sensibly recommends that retrieval
of spent fuel in existing on-site spent fuel pools to safer storage in
dry casks should be a priority.

Given these circumstances, a key goal for the
stabilization of the Fukushima-Daichi site is to place all of its spent
reactor fuel into dry, hardened storage casks. This will require about
244 additional casks at a cost of about $1 mllion per cask. To
accomplish this goal, an international effort is required – something
that Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) has called for. As we have learned,
despite the enormous destruction from the earthquake and tsunami at the
Dai-Ich Site, the nine dry casks and their contents were unscathed.
This is an important lesson we should not ignore.

ROBERT ALVAREZ, an Institute for
Policy Studies senior scholar, served as senior policy adviser to the
Energy Department’s secretary from 1993 to 1999. www.ips-dc.org

The previously unpublished assessment, carried out by US firm Accufacts, found that between 1,440 and 4,320 barrels of oil were flooding the Bodo area each day following the leak. The Nigerian regulators have confirmed that the spill lasted for 72 days.Shell’s official investigation report claims only 1,640 barrels of oil were spilt in total. But based on the independent assessment the total amount of oil spilt over the 72 day period is between 103,000 barrels and 311,000 barrels.

Adding insult to injury, Shell has yet to do a damn thing about it. “More than three years after the Bodo oil spill, Shell has yet to conduct a proper clean up or to pay any official compensation to the affected communities,” wrote Amnesty.

Patrick Naagbanton, Coordinator of CEHRD summed up the situation, stating:

The evidence of Shell’s bad practice in the Niger Delta is mounting. Shell seems more interested in conducting a PR operation than a clean-up operation. The problem is not going away; and sadly neither is the misery for the people of Bodo.

A tragic situation for Bodo’s citizens, to put it mildly.

[Let's see how long it takes for the Anchorage Daily News, APRN or the Alaska Dispatch to cover this. It is an important story for Alaskans. If it were up to me, I'd get some Bodo residents up to Barrow, Pt. Hope, Pt. Lay, Wainright and other communities as soon as possible, to share their stories with our own residents --- Philip Munger]

Thanks mostly to Mel Green and Jeanne Devon, what should be a national story by now is finally getting some local coverage by some of Anchorage's mainstream media: Several of the voting machines used in the April 3rd Anchorage municipal election appear to have been tampered with, The tampering was known about by the deputy city clerk, Jacqueline Duke, who attempted to cover up what may be a serious crime.

It may not be a serious crime, but given how far off from pre-voting polling some of the results were - most notably Proposition 5 - possible criminal conduct should not be ruled out. And given her instructions to voting day volunteers and workers, to ignore broken seals, Duke should immediately be put on leave until the conclusion of a thorough investigation.

Green's story is the more recent of the two, and there is duplicative material in the two stories. What is important about Mel's assiduous questioning and reporting on this, is that the possibility of rigged voting machines has now been taken up by KSKA, the Anchorage Daily News, and KTVA:

Any evidence of fraud could easily be rooted out with a recount, Duke said. She also said Isbell's retelling of her instruction about the broken voting machine seals was incomplete.

"What I said was, 'If you open up on election morning, and you see it's clearly broken from transport, don't worry, I have extras," Duke said.

The plastic is "flimsy," she said, and can break easily. That's not evidence of vote fraud, she said. [emphasis added]

But poll worker Wendy Isbell states:

Among those who did show up was Wendy Isbell, an election worker who also testified at Tuesday’s Assembly meeting. Isbell says she saw voting machines with broken seals, plastic pieces designed to prevent someone from tampering with a memory card that counts votes.

“I don’t see how they broke,” Isbell said. “They’re impossible to break. They were evenly cut.” [emphasis added]

The claim by Isbell that the seals were "evenly cut" seems enough to warrant suspension of Duke, and possibly a call to the State Office of Special Prosecutions and the U.S. Justice Department, in order for some outside forensic experts to take over inspection of the voting machines.

More information on Mayor Sullivan's elimination of the Data Processing Review Board, as covered by Steve Aufrecht's interview of Lupe Marroquin on April 19th needs to come out:

Steve Aufrecht of the blog What Do I Know? posted a 20-minute video interview with former deputy municipal clerk Guadalupe Marroquin, who preceded Jacqueline Duke as the person who supervised Anchorage municipal elections; among the topics Marroquin discussed was the importance of the security seals and other measures intended to guarantee the security and integrity of the election. One of these measures, the Data Processing Review Board, was made up of several IT experts who designed their own tests to challenge the programming of the AccuVote memory cards. Once satisfied, they sealed the AccuVote memory cards into place to prevent tampering. But the Data Processing Review Board was eliminated two years ago.

The state white collar crime unit should be approached by assembly chair Hall, for advice on what to do about looking directly at each machine for evidence of "evenly cut" security seals, and what it might mean if they were "evenly cut" by the same or similar devices.

Then, if they were "evenly cut," Duke should be sworn in and questioned thoroughly in the presence of her attorney.

The only thing about the April 3 MOA election that is certifiable at this point is its sheer shadiness.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

I'm thinking of writing a series of posts on Israel's ambassador to the United States. He first came to my attention when I read his book on the Six-Day War. It is the best military analysis of the conflict I've read.

In 2005, long before he was ambassador, I tried through several channels to get in touch with him via email, over the timeline his book's narrative approach gives for the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty. My letters were polite. I never got a response.

I'm not quite sure Oren is in over his head by inches or meters after watching this 60 Minutes segment.

Late this morning, Judy and I went out to help some friends with landscaping, greenhouse and gardening ideas. It was cool to help friends who haven't been serious vegetable gardeners lately get set up to dive back in.

Then we came home in the afternoon, to spend a bit more time getting our own vegetables on their start to fulfillment in 2012. Above are 36 tomato starters that are going to be given away to a number of friends: Stupice, Green Zebra, Violet Jasper, Morning Sun and Mini Orange.

Have you heard much lately about the 1.5 million Palestinians illegally imprisoned by the Israeli government in the world’s largest open-air Gulag? Their dire living conditions, worsened by a selective Israeli siege limiting the importation of necessities of life – medical items, food, water, building materials, and fuel to list a few – has resulted in an 80 percent unemployment rate and widespread suffering from unlawful punishment, arbitrary arrests and imprisonment in Israeli jails.

The horrific conditions were a result of the Israeli invasion of Gaza in late 2008, ignited by Israel’s breaking of a truce with Gaza on November 4. Fourteen hundred people died, nearly three hundred of them children, and thousands were injured. The terror bombing of the Gazan population smashed into homes, hospitals, schools, ambulances, mosques, subsistence farms, UN facilities, and even the American International School. Israeli bombers destroyed over 30 members of one extended family in their home. That toll alone was three times the amount of Israeli fatalities, which included friendly fire.
The humanitarian crisis in crowded Gaza – about twice the size of the District of Columbia – “is now more dire than ever.” That is the judgment of Norwegian physician and professor of medicine, Dr. Mads Gilbert, who just finished a ten-day speaking tour in the U.S. Dr. Gilbert, returning from a recent visit to Gaza, was one of the only two foreign doctors inside Gaza during the massacre of December 2008 to January 2009.

He says: “During the Israeli attack, I saw the effects of new weapons including drones, phosphorous and also DIME [Dense Inert Metal Explosives], which leave no shrapnel, but I witnessed their capacity to cut a child in two; they also leave radioactive traces.”

Today, anemia and protein deficiency are widespread, reports Dr. Gilbert, especially among little children. UN and other relief supplies are inadequate, and UN humanitarian relief staff is often harassed by Israeli officials. Rebuilding pulverized Gaza is seriously obstructed by Israel blocking the imports of building materials.

Dr. Gilbert comments that he has “worked in other desperate situations in other places and Gaza is unique in a number of respects. It’s a captive population – usually if civilians are being attacked, there’s a safe place they can take refuge and then come back to their homes when the fighting has stopped. That doesn’t exist for the people in Gaza since they are effectively imprisoned by the Israeli siege.”

Writing in the prestigious British medical journal “The Lancet” in early 2009, Dr. Gilbert provided clinical details of the slaughter, including the destruction of ambulances and medical facilities that tend to the dying and the wounded.

He described a “shattered, attacked, and drained health-care system trying to help an overwhelming amount of casualties in a war between clearly unequal powers, where the attacker spares no civilian lives – be it man, woman, or child – not even the much-needed health workers of all professions.”
It is no wonder the Israelis banned all foreign reporters, including those from the U.S. – the very country that provided the weaponry – thereby preventing the world from seeing the carnage as it happened.

The media ban made it possible for George W. Bush and president-elect Barack Obama to get away with describing this aggressive war with the identical phrase “Israel has the right to defend itself.” But apparently, the Palestinians do not have any way to defend themselves against the second-most modern military arsenal in the world; and their pleas about who broke the truce and started the bloodshed are unheeded.

Crude, garage-built Palestinian rockets are no match for modern precision missiles, helicopter gunships, bombers and drones. Fortunately for the Israelis, the rockets failed to reach any population centers 99 percent of the time. It was a mystery even to the Israelis why the unchallenged Israeli air force and ground artillery did not knock out the primitive Gaza launching sites, given its spies, informants and knowledge of every block in Gaza.

Reporters would have dug out these stories were they allowed inside Gaza. Since 2009, the focus of both the Israeli and U.S. government toward Iran has taken Gaza, the thousands of Palestinians in Israeli prisons, and the swallowing up of more land in the Palestinian West Bank, off of the news screens in the West.

It is remarkable how successful the Israeli propagandists have been in controlling the news coverage. They have even sidelined prominent retired Israeli security, military and political leaders, who along with civic and peace advocates are seeking a two-state solution, an end to confiscation of Palestinian land and houses, and debunking war talk against Iran, designed for domestic political purposes in Israel and the U.S.

For example, Meir Dagan, director of the Mossad – Israel’s CIA – from 2002 until 2010, called bombing Iran “the stupidest thing I ever heard.” In agreement are many other Israelis in the know. But, as in the U.S. during the months before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, experienced voices of realism and sanity are not heard. Nor are sobering words of candor, as voiced by Israel’s founding father, David Ben-Gurion, who said, of the dispossessed Palestinians years ago, “we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?”

Isn’t bringing these prominent Israeli truthsayers, peace advocates and military refuseniks to the U.S. Congress for their first-ever public hearing way overdue? At stake is peace or more wars in the Middle East. Also at stake is the possibility of another U.S. “war of choice” against Iran and the likely uncontrollable consequences that such belligerency would provoke. Would members of Congress let the AIPAC lobby block Israelis from coming here to present such testimony?

Or are the Senate Foreign Relations and House Foreign Affairs Committees, chaired respectively by Democratic Senator John Kerry and Republican Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, satisfied with following their party lines?

Friday, April 20, 2012

The last time I left Heathrow, I was questioned for 40 minutes by two very courteous young men from MI-5 about my activities in London during the preceding two weeks, as we were producing and performing The Skies Are Weeping. They seemed to know more bout what I had been doing there than I did. I showed them my impersonal event diary, and gave them the card of the U.S. Cultural Attache´ in the UK, for further details. They let me go.

Anchorage bloggers Linda Kellen Biegel, Jeanne Devon, Shannyn Moore, Mel Green and Steve Aufrecht deserve some sort of special award for their coverage of the most questionable municipal election in a large Alaska city in recent memory. The election, held on April 3rd, immediately drew criticism, as many voters were told there were not enough ballots, standards for accepting votes were questionable from precinct to precinct, and there were anomalous disparities in the numbers represented on the various ballot issues.

What a night. It was unnerving, disappointing, and had no closure whatsoever. Not by a long shot.

A post will be coming later this afternoon talking about the massive mayhem that surrounded this election, including insufficient ballots, voter misinformation from the anti-equality crowd, and what appear to be some serious violations of election law.

Shannyn Moore immediately started raising questions about the integrity of the election on her KOAN AM talk show. On April 7th, Moore used her weekly Anchorage Daily News column to raise questions:

We need a thorough, arm's-length audit of Tuesday's election. That will require reconciling reported election results by reviewing summary reports signed by poll workers with detailed accounting of total ballots received, cast, spoiled and left over. Then that can be compared to the poll tapes, signed voter registries, ballot receipts and a partial hand recount.

Some say re-running the city election would be too expensive and wouldn't change the outcome. I say the cost of an election in which we know that people were denied the most fundamental right of citizenship, though not measured in dollars, is far greater.

Moore is one of the most knowledgeable Alaskans on the shortcomings and tamper vulnerability of our Diebold-manufactured voting machines. Since the 2004 election some Alaskans, perhaps most notably former State Representative Kay Brown, have openly questioned the integrity and vulnerability of the Diebold Accu Vote and optical scan machines, the former which we have been using here since the 1990s. There were anomalies in the 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2010 statewide elections, most notably the huge differences between all polling data on the 2008 Don Young - Ethan Berkowitz contest. These results, though attracting national attention from vote rigging experts Brad Friedman and Bev Harris, received almost no attention and no close scrutiny from Alaska's mainstream media.

Friedman has weighed in on Anchorage's April 3rd election at his own blog, and as a contributor at The Mudflats. When the serious issue of illegally used voting machines with broken seals came up on April 14th, Friedman wrote:

“If and when any seal on these machines are broken they are to be immediately taken out of service and quarantined for forensic investigation. If that is not already the law in AK or Anchorage, then it is a grave security hole in the law.

Anyone who instructs someone to not report a broken seal and use such a machine anyway should be investigated for malfeasance, misfeasance and/or criminal election fraud.”

None of the above will be visible to anybody unless a full hand count of the paper ballots is carried out. And such a public hand count this late after an election is only as reliable as the chain of custody of the ballots since election night.It’s not only actual election failures and Diebold admissions that instruct us of the many ways these machines fail, but also independent study after independent study by world-class computer science and security experts in states like CA, OH and CO who have all found the very same thing over and over in each and every test.

On April 17th, Friedman wrote the best national-level account of this election, putting it into context of some of our earlier strange election results in Alaska. Here's part of his summation of the April 3rd problems:

The municipal election in early April including a Mayoral race and a number of ballot propositions. The most contentious was Prop 5, an initiative to extend anti-discrimination legal protections to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered (LGBT) community.

Just days before the election, a poll [PDF] by the conservative firm of Dittman Research & Communications found the incumbent Republican Mayor Dan Sullivan likely to defeat his Democratic opponent Paul Honeman, 56% to 35%. The same poll, however, showed Prop 5 set to win 50% to 41% with 9% of respondents still undecided.

On the night of the election, Sullivan was reported as the winner of his race by the paper-ballot Diebold optical-scan systems. The margin was 59% to 38%, pretty close to the results Dittman had predicted. Several bond initiatives on the ballot also reportedly passed, by even larger margins.

Yet Prop 5 was said to have gone down in flames. According to the Diebold results that night, it lost 58% to 42% --- a full 25-point swing from Dittman's pre-election poll just days earlier.

The potential for vote tampering is obvious — and whether intentional or not, Duke’s instruction to election workers to disregard broken security seals serves to make discovery of any such tampering less likely.

When interviewed by Friedman, Duke claimed ignorance of any problems with Diebold AccuVote machines, as did Election Commission chair Gwen Matthew, who also spoke with Friedman — this in spite of widely documented problems with the machines (described in both the Mudflats and the Brad Blog stories), including a years-long lawsuit in Alaska about the (lack of) integrity of the 2004 statewide elections.

These are (two of) the officials entrusted with guaranteeing the integrity of our election process. Whether out of malfeasance or out of willful blindness and/or incompetence: they have failed.

Steve Aufrecht, at his blog, What Do I Know?, today posted an extensive interview with former Deputy Municipal Clerk (and close friend of mine - you can come see her perform French Horn in the Anchorage Civic Orchestra next Saturday), Guadalupe Marroquin. She used to have the same responsibility as Jacqueline Duke. Unlike Duke, she took the responsibilities of monitoring elections and election machinery seriously. Here is Aufrecht's interview with Marroquin:

The local media has finally sort of come on board. But no article I've read or feature I've yet heard or seen comes as close or as deep in its scrutiny as the work of Devon, Biegel, Moore, Green or Aufrecht.

Svinicki, a George W. Bush appointee to the NRC, is considered a staunch ally of the nuclear industry, and, according to Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuclear, “is amongst the worst of the NRC Commissioners when it comes to implementing Fukushima lessons learned for safety upgrades at US reactors.”

Svinicki voted for the rubberstamp relicensing of Vermont Yankee’s GE Mark I reactor, and then pushed hard for NRC staff to finalize the paperwork just days after identical reactors experienced catastrophic safety failures at Fukushima Daiichi, and she has continued to fight new requirements for nuclear plants based on lessons learned from the Japanese disaster.

Prior to her time on the NRC, Svinicki served in the Department of Energy’s Washington, DC Offices of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology, and of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, and also served on the staff of then-Senator Larry Craig (R-ID), whom Kamps called “one of the most pro-nuclear US Senators of the past 15 years.”

During Svinicki’s time at DoE, she worked extensively on support documents for the proposed national nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. But in testimony during her 2007 Senate confirmation hearing for her NRC post, Svinicki was asked by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) if she worked “directly on Yucca”–and Svinicki replied, “I did not, no.”

This obfuscation–or “lie” as Reid has called it–is the official inflection point for the Nevada Senator’s objection to Svinicki’s re-up, but the full story has several layers.

Don’t open that mountain, Fibber

The proposed waste facility at Yucca Mountain has been a thorn in the side of Nevada politicians for decades. Harry Reid has made stopping the Yucca project his life’s work, and with the elevation of his former aid, Gregory Jaczko, to the chairmanship of the NRC, and the decision by the White House to defund further development of the site, it seemed like the Majority Leader had accomplished his goal.
But there is no current substitute for the Yucca site. The US nuclear power industry continues to produce thousands of tons of toxic waste in the form of highly radioactive “spent” fuel rods. That waste is currently stored around the country, on the grounds of the nation’s reactor fleet, in “spent fuel pools,” which require a steady power source to keep cooling water circulating, or once the spent fuel is a little older, in what are called “dry casks”–massive concrete coffins of a sort–and neither of these was intended to be anything but a temporary solution.

The nation’s fuel pools are already filled beyond their intended capacity. That makes them hotter, and, so, more dangerous. The higher temperatures and greater concentration of radioactive fuel mean that pools that suffer a power loss are in danger of boiling off their water faster–and without the cooling liquid, the cladding on the fuel rods can melt and catch fire, sending vast amounts of radioactive fallout into the atmosphere. In fact, it is the damaged spent fuel pool at Fukushima Daiichi reactor 4 that currently has those watching the Japanese crisis most concerned.

Dry casks are considered safer than liquid storage, but can only be used once fuel has had a chance to cool for years in pools. Further, some of the nation’s casks are already showing cracks, while others have moved during earthquakes.

The bottom line is that nuclear power plants cannot refuel without a place to put the old rods, and with onsite storage space exhausted, a long-term solution is needed. If the nuclear industry is to pursue license extensions for its 104 aging reactors, not to mention seek to expand that number with new construction, it needs a facility like Yucca Mountain, and it needs it fast.

But Yucca Mountain is not only opposed by all major Nevada politicians, be they Democrats or Republicans, it has proven to be a tremendously bad place for nuclear waste. The volcanic formation is more porous and less isolated than originally believed–there is evidence that water can seep in, there are seismic concerns, worries about the possibility of new volcanic activity, and a disturbing proximity to underground aquifers. In addition, Yucca mountain has deep spiritual significance for the Shoshone and Paiute peoples.

So what’s a nuclear industry to do?

One avenue might be to unseat the men most responsible for killing the project.

New coup review

Kristine Svinicki was at the center of attempts to oust Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko that went public late last year when Svinicki and the three other commissioners serving with Jaczko sent a letter to the White House complaining about their chairman’s management style. Central to the complaint, the way in which Jaczko used his authority to recommend that the Yucca project be terminated.

Also in the letter, the allegation that Jaczko was verbally abusive to female NRC employees, including Svinicki.

The complaint prompted hearings in both the House and Senate, with rather predictable, partisan results. Republicans, especially in the House, used the time to berate Jaczko and defend the nuclear industry, while Democrats tended to back Jaczko and highlight his focus on improved nuclear plant safety, especially in the wake of the Fukushima crisis. And while the White House voiced tepid support for its NRC chief, it seemed at the time like Jaczko owed at least some of his job security to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

But this part of the story is not over. There has already been one Inspector General’s report on Jaczko’s management, and another is due later this spring. The GOP-led House has also scheduled more hearings on this for the end of May.

Elections have consequences

While Svinicki’s performance as a nuclear regulator ranks poorly–even among a long line of industry-captured NRC commissioners–it is her work on Yucca Mountain and her role in the attempted ouster of Greg Jaczko that factor most prominently in the brewing standoff between President Obama and Senator Reid.

Senate Energy and Natural Resources ranking member Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) charged that Svinicki was being delayed because of “retribution.”“She has had the courage to step forward and has blown the whistle on the chairman,” Murkowski added, “and the chairman happens to be a good friend of Sen. Reid. So the question should be put to Sen. Reid: Why is he not allowing her to advance?”

Republicans, it seems, see this as a chance to counter the current “war on women” election-year narrative by showing their support not for a good friend to a friendly industry, but for an abused working woman. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) put it this way:

McConnell accuses Democrats of retaliating against NRC Commissioner Kristine Svinicki for taking part in an organized effort to oust NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko last year.“Commissioner Svinicki stood up to this guy, who somehow managed to avoid being fired in the wake of all these revelations, in an effort to preserve the integrity of the agency, and to protect the career staffers who were the subject of the chairman’s tactics,” said McConnell on the Senate floor Wednesday. “And now, for some mysterious reason, she’s being held up for re-nomination.”

The White House plans to renominate a Republican member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, forestalling a potential fight with Senate Republicans over whether she would be tapped to continue serving after raising concerns with the panel’s Democratic chairman.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney explained it this way: “The president will renominate Ms. Svinicki. He doesn’t want to have a break in service in June when her current term expires.”
Now that actually is funny–and like all good humor, it’s funny on several levels.
First, rather than facilitating the work of the nation’s top nuclear regulator, Svinicki has worked hard to weaken the NRC’s oversight role. From the previously noted quickie relicensing of Vermont Yankee, to consistent votes against requiring upgrades recommended by the commission’s post-Fukushima taskforce–even for yet-to-be-built reactors–to her role in the time-consuming coup attempt, Svinicki has made the NRC demonstrably less effective.

Second, remember what body has to hold hearings on Svinicki’s nomination, and then hold a vote to re-confirm her? That would be the Senate. And remember who runs the Senate? That would be Harry Reid–the same Harry Reid who just one day earlier had publicly registered his strong opposition to Svinicki. If the White House were really concerned with a speedy confirmation and no interruption in service, wouldn’t it have been better to coordinate a pick with the Majority Leader, rather than pointedly show him up?

Third, a “break in service”–the absence of one commissioner for some amount of time–should that occur, would not stop plant inspections. It would not stop enforcement of current safety regulations. No, the only thing a missing commissioner might delay is the approval of new reactors or the relicensing of old ones.

Still, this could be seen as classic “no drama Obama,” distilled in the crucible of an election, were it not for the consistent influence of the nuclear industry on the Obama administration. The evidence is as unavoidable as the presence of radioactive cesium in your broccoli–and just as unsettling. From the nuclear industry’s hefty contributions to Obama’s campaigns, to generating giant Exelon’s ties to Obama and confidants like Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod; from the president’s pledge of billions in loan guarantees for nuclear plant construction, to his appointment of nuclear industry insider William Magwood to the NRC; right through to Obama’s inclusion of atomic power in his smorgasbord of an energy policy at a time when much of the industrialized world is turning away from nuclear, the move by the White House to back Republican Svinicki isn’t just a political bugaboo. . . it’s a feature.

And while keeping Kristine Svinicki in place would be a nice amuse-bouche for Obama’s nuclear godfathers, nothing would satisfy the industry quite as much as Harry Reid’s head on a plate. For even though Nevada’s other Senator, Republican Dean Heller, also opposes the Yucca Mountain repository, he is not in either side’s leadership, and does not wield the power that Reid does. And without Reid in leadership to backup his former aid, it is likely Gregory Jaczko would be forced out as NRC chair.

And without Reid or Jaczko in the way, the path to reopening Yucca–as well as the path to relicensing a bevy of 40-year-old reactors with few new requirements–would be as clear as a Cherenkov blue pool.

Watch this space

As for now, of course, Harry Reid is still very much in place, and so is Greg Jaczko. The fight to hold the Senate for the Democrats, and, if that is accomplished, the fight Reid will have to remain as majority leader, are still down the road. First up is the battle over Kristine Svinicki.

On one side, you have Reid, along with Senators like Barbara Boxer and Bernie Sanders–all theoretically part of Obama’s power base, all realistically representing states Obama needs to win in November.

On the other side, you have the Senate Minority Leader, Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell, and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, and Wyoming’s junior Senator, John Barrasso–all partisan Republicans, all from states Obama won’t likely win this fall, nor will he need to.

If you were thinking in purely electoral terms, how would you handicap this fight?

But because Obama has renominated Svinicki, and because the president has opened up a public rift with his party’s Senate Majority Leader, it would appear more than simple election year vote counting is going on here. Is it just another case of Obama “going along to get along” with a GOP that has never had much interest in getting along with him, or is this another example of a president that campaigned on a green, alternative energy future showing that his real investment is in the dying, dirty and dangerous technologies of the past? Or is this about a coming showdown between Obama and Reid?

The choices are not mutually exclusive. Like that slogan Obama insists on calling an energy strategy, the answer could be “all of the above.”

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Above - morning sunshine on Feltleaf pussy willows. The sun is coming up before 7:00 am and getting earlier every morning.

Below - the first sun hitting the rapidly growing plants in the greenhouse. Seen are six kinds of tomatoes, two crops of arugula, four kinds of lettuce, four kinds of basil, cucumbers, zucchini, squash, beets, cilantro, fennel and corn:

Mutations in the Gulf: Eyeless and Lesioned Fish Found After BP Disaster

It was two years ago tomorrow that the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, leading to the largest oil spill in our nation’s history. And one of the strategies that BP and the federal government used to mask the enormity of the disaster was dispersants, the chemical liquid poured into the Gulf of Mexico in massive quantities. At least 1.9 million gallons of Corexit were deposited into the sea. We were told by the relevant authorities that all this was perfectly safe. And once the traditional media mostly looked away, there was no way for us to know. Except that pesky Al Jazeera did some actual reporting.

“The fishermen have never seen anything like this,” Dr Jim Cowan told Al Jazeera. “And in my 20 years working on red snapper, looking at somewhere between 20 and 30,000 fish, I’ve never seen anything like this either.”

Dr Cowan, with Louisiana State University’s Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences started hearing about fish with sores and lesions from fishermen in November 2010.

Cowan’s findings replicate those of others living along vast areas of the Gulf Coast that have been impacted by BP’s oil and dispersants.

Gulf of Mexico fishermen, scientists and seafood processors have told Al Jazeera they are finding disturbing numbers of mutated shrimp, crab and fish that they believe are deformed by chemicals released during BP’s 2010 oil disaster.

I’m not sure what else you could point to. This was the main disruptive force to the ecosystem in the recent past.

George Washington did found lots of other reports of the effect on marine life from the oil spill, but this Al Jazeera report really ties everything together, not only about mutations, but about the breakdown of the Gulf ecosystem generally. There’s no way that every one of these mutated fish was caught before it ended up on a dinner plate. I don’t know what that means for humans who consume them; the process of cooking may have removed some of the toxics. But I am no longer hankering for Gulf sushi. And the Gulf of Mexico provides 40% of all seafood consumed in the US, so it’s not really “Gulf” sushi at all.

Scientists know enough about dispersants to say fairly confidently that they’re causing the mutations in the Gulf. I’m sure the American Petroleum Institute can find some who think otherwise. And the office of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, contacted for the story, claimed that “Gulf seafood has consistently tested lower than the safety thresholds established by the FDA for the levels of oil and dispersant contamination that would pose a risk to human health.” And then there’s this bit of fancy footwork:

At the federal government level, the Food and Drug Administration and Environmental Protection Agency – both federal agencies which have powers in the this area – insisted Al Jazeera talk with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA won’t comment to the media because its involvement in collecting information for an ongoing lawsuit against BP.

So much remains unknown about the oil disaster, that it’s hard to take any statement denying serious damage to the Gulf on faith.

On Thursday, April 19th at 1:00 pm, in Room 150 of the UAA Fine Arts building, my Music Theory IV class will be attempting a rendition of Terry Riley's iconic minimalist canvas, In C.

A couple people have told me In C has been done before in Anchorage, but nobody can remember when, where, or by whom.

I'm inviting UAA students who aren't class members to participate. And - in this email - I'm inviting friends and colleagues from the Anchorage music community who have participated in or supported past events at UAA to come join us if you can.
If you come, you will have to pay for about two hours parking at one of the meters.

You need to be able to play it on your instrument or with your voice. You can transpose it to an octave in your register. For those who might bring a transposing instrument, please remember - the part is In C.

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Saturday morning at 9:00 am, the Mat-Su Democrats caucused at the old Mat-Su Cinema. I attended and participated in the general caucus on the presidential race, and in my District caucus on motions to be brought before the state convention in Fairbanks.

In the general caucus, which was hooked into a video feed from the Talkeetna caucus, I abstained on the motion of support for the president in his run for re-election. In the District 13 caucus, I voted in favor of our resolutions and signed on as a delegate to the convention.

I polled 19 of the 78 people there, asking four questions a out the Obama administration's position or actions on four topics.

After the caucus concluded, at about 12:40, I drove over to Newcomb Park on Wasilla Lake, and polled 20 people out of the 275 attending the Tea Party tax day event there.

Tea Party Event at Wasilla Lake - April 14, 2012

Here are the results (some people did not answer every question):

1. President Obama’s administration’s Solicitor General recently sided with plaintiffs in the Supreme Court Decision granting police authority to strip search any prisoner held, even for the smallest charge. Do you agree?

2. President Obama asserts the right to be able to assassinate any American overseas for any reason his advisors see fit, without recourse to even attempt due process. He also asserts that all information on how these decisions are made needs to be kept secret. Do you agree?

Later in the day, in early afternoon, the Wasilla Tea Party Conservatives will have their annual Tax Day event at Newcomb Park:

I'll be there, photographing the event, and - for the third time - polling participants.

I'll be asking people at the caucus and the Tea Party event the same set of questions:

Questions for Mat-Su Democratic Party Caucus
and Wasilla CPG Tea Party Tax Rally

1. President Obama’s administration’s Solicitor General recently sided with plaintiffs in the Supreme Court Decision granting police authority to strip search any prisoner held, even for the smallest charge. Do you agree?
agree
disagree

2. President Obama asserts the right to be able to assassinate any American overseas for any reason his advisors see fit, without recourse to even attempt due process. He also asserts that all information on how these decisions are made needs to be kept secret. Do you agree?
agree
disagree

3. President Obama has markedly expanded the use of of armed drone strikes in countries around the world. Do you agree?
agree
disagree

4. President Obama has used the Espionage Act for prosecution of more people than all previous administrations combined. Do you approve?
approve
disapprove